It’s a blah monochrome day outside. The breeze coming in the window is quite chilly and once again I’m waiting for work to come in. It sucks being at the mercy of your clientele but welcome to the world of freelancing. It’s an inglorious, often misunderstood and unforgiving realm where self-respect is non-existent and you always have to “put on a good smile” even when you feel like stomping a mud hole in someone. It’s what’s commonly referred to as “the mask”.

We all put on our masks every day life. Don’t fool yourself and believe you don’t. Works masks, friend masks, parent masks, sibling masks, spousal masks, dude masks, whore masks, public masks, private masks… there’s a never ending supply of them and we don them as we see fit according to the social interaction we have to engage in. They can be as close to your true self as you can get or they can be as diverse a bag of jelly beans. We wears masks so often that sometimes we forget who we truly are inside. I know that’s the case with me sometimes. I’m often known as the funny or pleasant guy. Always respectful and constantly in pursuit of putting a smile on someone’s face. It does actually make me somewhat happy to make others happy – as cheesy as it may sound – but there comes times when not even that can bring up my spirits. It’s the classic tragic clown syndrome. Who makes the clown laugh?

Many times I feel like I’m losing my mind. I put on the happy-go-lucky face so often that when I don’t feel like being chipper – or cracking a joke or lightening the mood it feels wrong. Am I wrong for not wanting to be happy all the time? No person can be happy 24/7 (unless they have some really good drugs that they’re not sharing) but whenever I drift off into one of these despondent moods I’m immediately criticized or questioned as to why I’m “acting” them way I’m behaving. Can I not be uninspired and unimaginative for a little bit? It’s as though I’m expected to forever be the cheery informative creative guy despite having to go through all the same crap everyone else has to deal with on a daily basis. Maybe it’s not an act? Maybe I’m really just a pernicious person deep down inside and whenever I grow weary of trying to appease people all the time the real me begins to surface.

Who knows.

I just felt like squeezing out a rant (yet again) because people need to realize that nice people aren’t nice just because they’re born nice. It isn’t a mystical power we summon from an ancient amulet or a prescription pill we can pop when needed. It can’t be turned on and off like a light switch and it certainly isn’t an endless energy source. We get pissed just like you. We get angry, depressed, resentful, remorseful and vengeful just like anyone else – just more so because we handle our emotions the old school way. We bottle them up until they manifest into a health condition. ;p

Now I gotta go and find my beanie and my cardboard sign so I can whore around for some work while I’m waiting on my other clients. Cheers!

Oye! You’re immediately questioned about your mood because it’s obvious that you’re not putting up a front at the time. People may not always show that they care the right way…but that doesn’t mean they don’t care…

I feel you brotha. If I was to voice a third of the thoughts that go through my head most people would see me in a different light. Like you I am viewed as the mediator or the nice guy. But this does not come without it’s inner turmoil.

I don’t want to be the troublematic dispensing machines that some people feel so comfortable with being. But everyone in a while I want to be able to shed the all problem absorbing layer and not give a flying nuff about what people are going through. Sometimes I want to just go ahead and not avoid the argument by actually telling someone who is complaining about something that they are totally wrong about, that they are a self serving petty sumamabich who really doesn’t have it as bad as they think and should wake up to the real world and stop living in that buble of nonsense you have created for yourself.

Don’t get me wrong. I will always try to see things from someone elses perspective. But sometimes I wish I didn’t take that sharp butchers and bludgeoning blade from my tongue.

Does that make me a bad person, that I don’t want to absorb someoneelses stress along with my own?

Doesn’t make you a bad person at all. It makes you all the more human and this is what people have to realize. It’s hard work being nice. That’s why Spaceballs will always have the best line ever to sum up life – “Evil will always triumph over good because good is dumb.”.